The U.S. military has halted flights carrying Haitian earthquake victims to the United States because of an apparent dispute over where seriously injured patients should be taken for treatment.
An American doctor treating victims in Port-au-Prince warned that at least 100 patients needed to get to better hospitals or they could die, while the U.S. government said it was working to expand hospital capacity in both Haiti and in the U.S.
It was unclear exactly what prompted the Wednesday decision by the U.S. military to suspend the flights, or when it would end. Military officials said some states were refusing to take patients, though they wouldn't say which states.
"There has been no policy decision by anyone to suspend evacuee flights," White House spokesman Tommy Vietor said. "This situation arose as we started to run out of room." . . .
"We have 100 critically ill patients who will die in the next day or two if we don't Medevac them," said [Dr. Barth] Green, chairman of the University of Miami's Global Institute for Community Health and Development.
2. AP reported on Saturday afternoon - Latrines join food, water on Haiti's crisis list -- that about a tenth of the needed sanitation facilities are being provided Haiti's earthquake victims:
A lack of sanitation threatens to create killer diseases in the vast refugee camps where hundreds of thousands of earthquake survivors have crammed in together, relief officials said Saturday, as the need for latrines increasingly joined food and water and shelter as major concerns.
Just one portable toilet serves about 2,000 people in a sprawling camp across from the collapsed National Palace, forcing most to use a gutter next to where vendors cook food and mothers struggle to bathe their children.
Nearly three dozen organizations are joining in a U.N.-led effort to build latrines and handle solid waste disposal, said Dr. Jon Andrus, deputy director of the Pan American Health Organization. Authorities also plan to build more permanent resettlement camps with plumbing and sewage and have identified some locations.
The results of these efforts aren't yet evident in many places.
"I haven't seen sanitation at any of the camps," said Dr. Louise Ivers, Haiti clinical director for Partners in Health. She fears "a mass outbreak of measles, which would really be potentially devastating for a camp where there are 10,000 people living."
The same article points out the pathetically tiny supply of tents provided quake victims:
Few tents have been supplied to the quake's survivors, exposing people to the elements. Signs begging for help in English - not Haitian Creole - dot nearly every street corner in Port-au-Prince.
It could take weeks to get the 200,000 tents needed for Haiti's homeless, said Marie-Laurence Jocelyn Lassegue, the culture and communications minister. Haiti now has fewer than 5,000 donated tents and coordinating the aid operation remains a problem.
Some Haitians are so fed up with the camps that they are making a risky return to their destroyed homes - often the only semblance of property they have left.
"The situation is only getting worse," said Josielle Noel, 46, who was among dozens of people pooling their labor to start rebuilding in the concrete slum of Canape Vert, an area devastated by the Jan. 12 quake. . . .
3. Friday morning, AP reported - in Haiti, food aid still falls short -- that food, water and shelter continue to be simply absent most places:
The newly homeless of the rubble-strewn Bizoton slum say they haven't gotten food, water or help with shelter in the two weeks since the earthquake.
"If it rains now, that's it," Wilson St. Ellis, 50, a father of eight, said Wednesday amid plastic sheets stretched here and there as flimsy shields against the elements. . . .
Food remains scarce for many of the neediest survivors despite the efforts of the United Nations, the U.S. military and dozens of international aid groups. Relief experts say the scale of this disaster and Haiti's poor infrastructure are presenting unprecedented challenges, but Haitian leaders complain coordination has been poor. . . .
The [U.N. World Food Program] says rising tensions and security incidents - "including people rushing distribution points for food" - have hampered deliveries. But since the massive relief effort's first days, other problems have also delayed aid - blocked and congested roads, shortages of trucks, a crippled seaport and an overloaded Port-au-Prince airport.
"The unblocking of the logistical bottlenecks is an absolute priority," the European Commission said Wednesday, describing a seven-day backlog of 1,000 relief flights seeking permission to land at the single-runway airport.
4. Friday night, the BBC -- in Construction slow on Haiti's 'tented villages' -- reports that more than two weeks after the quake, there are still no signs of tented villages promised by the Haitian government.
At least one million people were left homeless by the quake, which flattened most of the capital, Port-au-Prince.
Only aid workers have so far succeeded in the construction of a ''tented village'' for 3,000 refugees.
5. On Thursday, Paul Farmer, UN deputy special envoy to Haiti, stated in the Miami Herald's Inept government, past U.S. policy seen hampering Haiti relief effort that the effort to clear the rubble was one-tenth what it needs to be, that there were numerous other inadequacies in the relief effort, and cast blame in various directions:
. . . Paul Farmer, the United Nations deputy special envoy to Haiti, told the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations on Thursday that there was a mismatch between relief efforts and Haiti's ability to absorb them.
"Where we are creating 4,000 jobs in cleaning rubble, we must create 40,000 jobs," Farmer said. "We must hasten our efforts to get tents, tarpaulins and latrines or composting toilets to Haiti."
Without better sanitation, he said, thousands of displaced Haitians are at risk for cholera and other diseases.
The inability of Haiti's government to respond and to speed the work of the aid organizations has its roots in years of corruption, the mushrooming of slums, deforestation and faulty U.S. policy, he said.
Farmer said the Bush administration had bypassed the Haitian government repeatedly to deliver aid and humanitarian services to the Caribbean country. The consequence was a poorly funded and inadequate public sector, he said. Over-reliance on private aid organizations also weakened the country's food security. As a result of these failed policies, the Haitian government is unable and underprepared to coordinate the relief and reconstruction efforts today, Farmer said. . . .
Farmer also took aim at aid organizations, saying they had stripped a share of available funds from the Haitian people.
"The aid machinery currently at work in Haiti keeps too much overhead for its operations and still relies overmuch on NGOs" - nongovernmental organizations - "or contractors who do not observe the ground rules we would need to follow to build Haiti back better," he said.
6. Bill Quigley, Loyola University New Orleans law professor and longtime activist with the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti, wrote on Friday from Port au Prince - in Hell and Hope in Haiti -- that there is no real government and that help hasn't really gotten to most of the city, but that Haitians are creating order and self-help communities on their own.
. . . Troops and heavy machinery are only seen in the center of the city.
After days in Port Au prince I have seen only one fight - two teens fighting on a streetcorner over a young woman. No riots. No machetes.
Hope is found in the people of Haiti. Despite no electricity, little shelter, minimal food and no real government or order, people are helping one another survive. . . .
The same article speaks to St. Clares, Port au Prince, activist Lavarice Gaudin:
What should outsiders do, I asked Lavarice Gaudin? Lavarice, who helps the St. Clares community feed thousands each day through their What If Foundation, said, "Help the most poor first. Some who labored their whole lives to make a one bedroom home will likely never have a home again. Haiti needs everything. But we need it with a plan. Pressure the Haitian government, pressure US AID to help the poorest."
International volunteers who work hand-in-hand with Haitians are welcomed. Others not so much.
Lavarice saw the Associated Press story that reported only one penny of every US aid dollar will go directly in cash to needy Haitians. "I can understand that they distrust the government, but why not distribute aid through the churches and good community organizations?"
"We hope this will help us develop strong leadership that listens and responds to the people." . . .
Lavarice touches on why the relief effort has been so chaotic and inadequate. First of all, the Haitian government is not being allowed to coordinate the relief effort - see Haitian President Preval bemoans lack of coordination in aid relief -- and where it does get involved, there is corruption and bribery. Also, the militarized U.S. response prioritizes security over relief - see Mark Weisbrot's Security Kills and Peter Hallward's Securing Disaster in Haiti, both from Counterpunch. Obsession with security also hampers the big NGOs from getting to the majority of the victims - see Tonya Golash-Boza's Struggling for Dignity and Survival in Haiti and Sasha Kramer's Letter From Port au Prince. Golash-Boza writes:
There are a lot of soldiers all over the city. It is unclear what is their function might be. They patrol the streets with big guns at the ready, yet I have not seen any soldiers engaged in the clean up effort. And, it is clear that the function of the US soldiers is security. Some soldiers protect food deliveries, but there are far too few deliveries. Food distribution is a major problem in Haiti, in part because of widespread concern over security issues. There are not enough armed guards to protect food shipments on the street, so they do not go out.
The international community has to include the Haitian community in the food distribution system. That is the best way to maintain security. Part of the reason Haitians have not been organized in distribution efforts is a lack of confidence in Haitian people to organize themselves effectively and to share resources. Despite this perception, which is fueled by mass media portrayals of Haitians as looters and desperate, I have seen plenty of evidence that Haitians are capable of organizing themselves and distributing resources. Unfortunately, the calm streets and civic organization of Haitians does not seem to be newsworthy for mainstream media.
Another way to look at the Haitian conundrum/crisis/dilemma is that it is the product of decades of neo-colonization informed by neo-liberal, 'government is the problem' thinking. The result, Haiti doesn't have but needs a functioning sovereign government that is not afraid of the Haitian people and puts their needs first. The U.S. certainly is not going to supply one. Hallward sum up:
. . . it's now clear that the initial phase of the U.S.-led relief operation has conformed to the three fundamental tendencies that have shaped the more general course of the island's recent history. It has adopted military priorities and strategies. It has sidelined Haiti's own leaders and government, and ignored the needs of the majority of its people. And it has proceeded in ways that reinforce the already harrowing gap between rich and poor. . . .
A final thought is how the U.S. response to Katrina echoes through the U.S.-led Haiti earthquake relief effort. It's the response of a government that has been so thoroughly privatized that the only relief coordinating agency we can provide is our military. Which doesn't work, but that is being ignored: hard to criticize the military here in the States. |
